The Body Language of Feet - <AUTHOR> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/6709373/How-to-tell-if-a-woman-fancies-you-look-at-her-feet.html

<comment><AUTHOR> This is interesting because it draws the conclusion that women are more expressive with their feet than men; I'm curious about possible theories of why this is. Also, that "dishonest" people tend to have more still body movements is an interesting conclusion. Any YC news stories to back up these conclusions?</comment>


MSR Commits Reconfigurable Computing Port Into NetBSD - <AUTHOR> http://mail-index.netbsd.org/netbsd-announce/2011/01/26/msg000121.html

<comment><USER2> I've researched this topic for a while in university, and the idea was to keep a general purpose FPGA as a programming device, and load preconfigured images to it when needed. For example load up an encryption module when encryption intensive operations took place, or load a video encoder/decoder whenever needed.

There were a few problems:

* Each FPGA vendor has its own architecture and such a technology requires momentum from these vendors. A 3rd party cannot do much about it.

* Dedicated ASIC circuits often perform better with less power consumption. So keeping a general purpose FPGA may not bring sufficient benefit to develop the technology.

<comment><USER3> Would it be possible to blend something like this into, say, GCC, so that when you compile your code, easily hardware accelerated sections (for whatever definition of that you like) can be generated into FPGA loadable files and used at runtime?

<comment><USER2> Yes I thought about this idea. For example it would be nice to have a .fpga section in the ELF files and one could load images as part of OS file execution.

It is a nice idea and I would try to push this as a technology if I was Xilinx or Altera. But it requires that momentum to become a reality because this creates a new model and ABI for software - one that doesn't exist today.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Project page can be found here: <http://research.microsoft.com/en- us/projects/emips/></comment>


Eating out – one month in SF - <AUTHOR> http://rf45.wordpress.com/2012/09/04/eating-out-one-month-in-sf/

<comment><USER2> Very interesting. I look forward to reading a summary of your month of eating in, but one thing to be careful of is that because you won't have any staples/basics, you should be planning/ready to spend more than you hope your 'average' costs will be. For instance, olive oil, salt, pepper, other seasonings to taste, can all add up fairly quickly but you'll only need to purchase them every few months, if that. Especially if you find some good bulk food stores, you could stock up on non-perishables for a couple of months: while it looks bad on a one-month budget, it'll look good on a three month view.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's possible to eat out cheaply and healthy in SF but it requires years of practice (in my experience.) You'll eventually figure out where to go and what to get where based on the day of the week (specials), time of day (portion sizes) and time of the year (seasonal items.)

For instance, I just happened upon a place in Mission Bay that makes a custom salad (literally, they make it in front of you) with meat, cheese and two other items for $7.50. This salad must weigh 1lb. It's huge, healthy, a great deal and could be split into two meals.

Don't give up!</comment>


A More Ergonomic Keyboard Strategy - <AUTHOR> http://blog.paulrugelhiatt.com/hacks/keyboards/2015/06/15/a-more-ergonomic-keyboard-strategy.html <comment><USER2> While this is pretty novel (I don't recall seeing anything exactly like this in the past 25 years), I doubt that it's truly more ergonomic than a standard keyboard on a desk that's at the right height and distance from you.

With the keyboards at angles like that your hands are going to be pulled by gravity downward away from the keyboard at rest. Meaning you have to hold your hands in typing position. Additionally, those keyboards don't seem to have a lot of support and I foresee a bit of wobble, which is also not great.

When I was young (early teens) and a novice programmer/avid gamer I used to have wrist pain. It turned out this was mainly due to two factors; bad positioning of my arms and wrists while typing, and typing too hard. I retrained myself to position my arms and wrists such that they are truly at rest when typing (weigh resting on the heels of my palms) and to type gently, only using the amount of force necessary, and never pushing against the key while it is bottomed out, and in the following 25+ years of typing often >12 hours a day I never have wrist problems, despite a variety of keyboards.

Usually when I encounter people who are having wrist pain from typing, their posture and typing too hard are the problem. Sometimes changing out the keyboard helps induce a more mindful approach to typing and helps them relax, or adjusts their position such that it fixes the problem. But often times it doesn't, because the problem is their behavior, not the device.

Try typing more gently, and try adjusting your posture so you're not having to use your fore arm muscles to hold your hands in position. Those may help you.

Obviously everybody should do whatever works for them, but this is my experience. And I've typed a lot.

<comment><USER3> If you use a mechanical keyboard, the keypress registers before bottoming out, about halfway down. Here are some animations.

[http://superuser.com/a/366797/203540](http://superuser.com/a/366797/203540)

<comment><USER4> I've tried several different varieties of "mechanical" keyboards, including buckling-spring keyboards, and I've come to the conclusion that I genuinely _prefer_ laptop-style keyboards that have a hard stop for my fingers. (Specifically, I type on ThinkPad keyboards, even on desktops and docked systems; I use USB ThinkPad keyboards, complete with the mouse on home row.)

I don't type "through" the hard stop; my fingers know to stop right at the hard stop, but I prefer a physical stop rather than just a change (subtle or otherwise) in the amount of pressure I have to apply. I also like the very small amount of travel in the key.

<comment><USER5> I'd sort of agre with this, I find I type fastest these days on my bluetooth apple keyboard but my personal favourite is still my TiBook semi-trsnaparent keyboard, it had a comfortable amount of travel and great action.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This recent kickstarter might be of interest to some of you: [https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/keyboardio/the- model-01...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/keyboardio/the-model-01-an- heirloom-grade-keyboard-for-seriou)

Discussed here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9719773](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9719773)

</comment><comment><USER7> The Ergodox split keyboard is designed for exactly this arrangement. Both the hardware and firmware are freely licensed, allowing for easy customisation. The design features a large cluster of keys under the thumb position, allowing for ergonomic use of modifiers - no more emacs pinky.

The CAD files are available at Ergodox.org if you'd like to build your own, or you can contribute to this crowdfunding campaign to receive a preassembled keyboard:

[https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/ergodox-ez-an- incredible-...](https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/ergodox-ez-an-incredible- mechanical-keyboard)

<comment><AUTHOR> Definitely interested in Ergodox, those things are sweet. If only it were wireless :/

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> You're almost there, a few more iterations and you are ready for DataHand[0].

[0] [http://octopup.org/computer/datahand](http://octopup.org/computer/datahand)

edit: yes, I'm joking - but at the same time, I wish I could afford a DataHand...

<comment><AUTHOR> Ha, so awesome.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Keyboard manufacturers must like this, double revenue!

</comment><comment><USER10> I've done this and it works for normal typing. The downside is key combinations do not work across the keyboards (at least on Mac OS X). Example, pressing cmd on the left keyboard and p on the right keyboard will not trigger cmd-p.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hmm that might be a configuration issue, my combinations work as expected. I'm in Vim pretty much the entire day so if key combinations didn't work this would be a non-starter

<comment><USER11> That might be a killer in EMCAS, but you can type in Vim all day without any chords except the shift key. I don't understand the reference in op as if Vim required tons of control keys like EMACS either.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I used to suffer from rsi issues due to keyboard usage and tried many things to fix it. In the end, the solution turned out to be a curved keyboard. I use a cheap Microsoft comfort curve keyboard nowadays, and have no issues anymore, except when I go back to a straight keyboard for a while. Sometimes the simple fixes are the best.

</comment><comment><USER13> I prefer the flatter, one handed spin on the idea. [https://www.google.com/search?q=half+keyboard&tbm=isch](https://www.google.com/search?q=half+keyboard&tbm=isch)

</comment><comment><USER14> Kind of a brute force hack, but why not? A Kinesis Freestyle2 with Bluetooth and a 20" cable might work, except that you'd have to fiddle with the cable across your lap every time you got out of the chair.

</comment><comment><USER15> The only problem with ergonomic keyboards is hands fit so nicely in those keyboards that I find it very uncomfortable to reach to mouse. A trackball in the ergonomic keyboards will be really nice.

<comment><USER16> A few options: Some people mount trackballs in their ergo dox. Some keyboards like the keyboard.io include mouse movement keys. You can also find desktop keyboards that include a track point. No ergonomic ones as far as I can tell.</comment></comment>


Telegram stalking - <AUTHOR> http://oflisback.github.io/telegram-stalking/ <comment><USER3> For those wondering, head into Setting > Privacy and Security > Last Seen to change the setting. Available options are Everybody, My Contacts, and Nobody. Manual overrides for specific contacts can be toggled with the Always Share With setting.

<comment><USER4> It doesn't stop to show you as "online" when the app is in the foreground.

<comment><USER5> Yes, it DOES stop showing you as online. If you are not sharing your last seeen/online status with somebody, he will NOT see you online, regardless of the app they are using.

There is one exception to this: people will see you online for a brief period of time right after you send THEM a message (otherwise it would feel like talking to a wall).

See: [https://telegram.org/faq#q-can-i-hide-my-last-seen- time](https://telegram.org/faq#q-can-i-hide-my-last-seen-time) And: [https://telegram.org/faq#q-who-can-see-me- online](https://telegram.org/faq#q-who-can-see-me-online)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> So basically, somebody could use telegram metadata to see when I came online...on telegram? And they could also make a best guess at who I'm talking to? You don't even have to go to the CLI client for this, the 'target' status is visible on the top of every conversation. Pretty much any chat client I could think of has a feature like this.

Seriously, how is this even on the front page? It seems that people lately are coming up with excuses to call out any app/software/company based on privacy concerns, just so they get some attention.

<comment><USER7> Which other chat clients reveal if they are the foreground app right now or not? I haven't come across any as far as I remember (I don't use that many though). How many of those reveal it to everybody, without any confirmation?

(And even if it were general default behavior doesn't mean it isn't pretty crappy from a privacy point of view)

<comment><USER8> WhatsApp will hide last seen, but will still show you if a user is online instantaneously - you'd have to have their conversation open.

Facebook too, will show a user as instantaneously online even if they have chat turned off for you (I think). On the plus side, Facebook recently disabled API access for online/offline status of your friends unless they've consented.

<comment><USER9> > _Facebook recently disabled API access for online /offline status of your > friends unless they've consented._

Is this for just the messenger app or the facebook mobile app?

<comment><USER8> It's for the graph API, which I have no experience with, but I guess it covers both?

The limitation is in the API only, you can still see the statuses in-app and online, but you would have to resort to a webscraper to get them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I realized this as well the first time I logged in the account of the bot I develop and maintain: it's quite creepy.

I'm open to changes but I absolutely need a system with a desktop client and an API or something to interface it with hubot. So Signal, as the author suggested, is not a valid alternative for me.

<comment><USER11> Same here. I will migrate to Signal and try to convince my network to do the same the second there is a good cross-platform desktop app and all clients have full functionality.

<comment><USER12> I've been experimenting with ricochet.im as a desktop client.

Ideally, it would be great if Signal and Ricochet could merge best of breed features. That could mean a unified app across mobile and desktop with good security over Tor...

<comment><USER13> A downside with Ricochet is that it reveals when you are online to anyone who knows your id.

> Anyone with the onion address can still estimate availability by watching > descriptors

[https://github.com/ricochet- im/ricochet/issues/155](https://github.com/ricochet-im/ricochet/issues/155)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Speaking of third party clients... Does anybody know a good way to export/backup all of your Telegram conversations? I see there's a history command in [https://github.com/vysheng/tg](https://github.com/vysheng/tg), but it doesn't look like it will do what I want. Ie. dump each separate each conversation.

<comment> ju-st The "tdata" folder of my Telegram Desktop installation contains propably all my conversations, but the files are apparently encrypted.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I've been more and more concerned about Telegram recently. Here's a mail I sent them recently covering most of these concerns. Naturally, I got no response.

" Hey there Telegram!

I have been an early Telegram user since late 2013 and was highly optimistic that it would become a perfect messenger. It's quite perfect from a UX point of view – which is important to gain users – but other things aren't that perfect.

You claim to be open and secure, but taking a closer look that doesn't seem to be true. Your API is open and the client apps were released as open source, but your server-side code remains closed source. It's been 2 years now and you still haven't open sourced the server. Do you still plan to release it? You say that you will eventually add paid options, which doesn't seem to be compatible to open-sourcing the server.

Of course one would have to trust you that you actually use that version of the server on your side, which leads to the second issue that concerns me. You advertise being secure a lot, but default chats don't use end-to-end encryption and secure chats aren't even possible for group chats. Even for encrypted chats a bunch of concerns were raised by much respected people in the security community, I'm sure you are aware of that and will not brag about that here.

I opened an issue on the Android app's issue tracker in early 2014 about end- to-end encryption ([https://archive.is/9SfYt](https://archive.is/9SfYt)). There have been dozens of comments on that issue, discussing how it could be implemented but there was no official reply by the Android maintainer or any official Telegram account, despite numerous attempts.

The Android app's maintainer also doesn't seem to understand version control / git and commits tons of changes in a single commit and also doesn't use tags for versioning. He also doesn't merge pull requests but rather includes them in his large commits (thus also removing all attribution). There are also binary blobs in the source code and there are various licensing issues. All these issues have been raised but the Android maintainer doesn't seem to care about it.

The issue tracker for that app has now been closed by the maintainer and there was no explanation for this. Several people tried several times to reach out to the maintainer, but he never replied. I believe this is a huge problem for a security app, and for open source apps in general.

Last but not least, the current version of Telegram on the Google Play Store (3.2.4) is not open source.

Of course, client apps don't have anything to do with the server implementation, API, or general issues about Telegram. You've linked a Trello board somewhere deep on your website, but the link is broken. It's a major issue that there is no way to discuss problems, feature requests, or ask questions to the developers (we don't even know who the developers are). There is a community-run Telegram support account and a press contact and there's this email address and a Twitter account. Obviously none of these work as a discussion / issue platform, and you don't seem to reply to Telegram questions or Twitter.

A very good way to fix this is creating an organization account on GitHub and create a repo where you can use the issue tracker and wiki. You could also move the "official" clients to that account to have them at one place and you could use it to open-source or document other things related to Telegram.

It's also not clear at all who runs Telegram. All your website says is that it's financially supported by Pavel Durov and technically supported by Nikolai Durov. Your official apps and AS Networks are registered by " Telegram Messenger LLP" or "Telegram LLP" and your website claims your headquarters are based in Berlin, although no such company seems to be registered in the EU. You are legally required to publish your address and contact information to comply with German law §5 TMG. Additionally, both the LLP's and Nikolai's address are apparently at (different) British P.O. boxes. Is Nikolai the only developer or are there more? How are the official maintainers related to the LLP? Are they paid? Are they employees? Are there any employees at all? Who runs the company?

I'm really trying to not hate you and hope that you are what you claim to be, but it seems like you advertise security and openness successfully, so that the average user and the press buys it, but taking a closer look you seem rather shady without being very open. I feel very sad about this and hope you'll improve that.

Please shed some light and address these issues, most importantly a public issue tracker / discussion forum.

Thank you! – jomo "

<comment><USER16> Just use Actor.im. I worked at Telegram and because of it's closed-source policy quit and reimplemented server based on same ideas.

After a year we are already well-established company and fully open source platform.

<comment><USER17> A beautiful site devoid of any technical or pricing details, and the 'contact us' button doesn't even work.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> So if your have every possible iteration of phone numbers in your contact list, you could find every single Telegram account? How is this not a published attack vector?

<comment><USER19> Similar to how Snapchat was hacked last year: [http://techcrunch.com/2013/12/31/hackers-claim-to-publish- li...](http://techcrunch.com/2013/12/31/hackers-claim-to-publish-list- of-4-6m-snapchat-usernames-and-numbers/)

<comment><USER20> I tried to post a link to that on reddit back when it happened, but I got shadowbanned.

I was posting a link to a link to personal information (the phone numbers were censored in the version I referenced) and thus it was considered witch hunting.

Witch hunting every single user of Snapchat...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Well, at least Telegram is open source. So this is something that is easily fixed.

<comment><USER22> For those that missed the sarcasm, Telegram is not open source: [https://telegram.org/faq#q-why-not-open-source- everything](https://telegram.org/faq#q-why-not-open-source-everything)

<comment><USER7> The client apps are, which might be enough

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> ICQ (remember that one?) used to show when user logs in, or logs out - <USER2> need to add user to contact list and get his/her authorization. I used one terminal client to monitor when I get disconnected to see how "stable" my connection was. So this is not new.

<comment><USER24> It may not be new, but ICQ never made the security claims of Telegram.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> signal >>>

<comment><USER12> While I'm generally on Signal bandwagon, I don't buy the previously given reasons for using telephone numbers as endpoint identifiers.

What I would like to see is the ability to periodical regenerate endpoint ids like what Burner does for phone numbers. Also, optionally add the ability to traverse Tor like ricochet.im

That would be nice.

<comment><USER26> This would also allow to use it from wifi tablets. The suggestion to be able to change end point identifier is excellent.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> telegram is slightly better than the alternative, such as whatsapp.

only problem is that nobody uses it. so i might as well not use as well. which increases the problem that nobody uses it.

it is really hard to break into the IM market.

<comment><USER28> I'd say the opposite - to me IM market seems pretty dynamic, and it's not dominated by one player. I myself use a few different apps: iMessages, Facebook Messenger, Whatsapp, Skype, Google Hangouts. Then there's WeChat (huge in China), Line (big in Japan and Korea). I've also met quite a few people using Telegram.

<comment><USER29> Probably depends on your friends. I bought an Ubuntu phone and its a struggle to get people to switch from Whatsapp to Telegram.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Can't even use signal on my phone, due to not having GAPPS installed.

It's too bad, because I would use it otherwise.

</comment><comment><USER31> Everything by Durov is a sucker trap.</comment>


Fired because your skills are too far above your coworkers - <AUTHOR> http://workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/79992/fired-because-your-skills-are-too-far-above-your-coworkers <comment><AUTHOR> Not sure that the problem is incompetent colleagues as much as it is an unwillingness on his part to reach out and help them understand the code he was writing. There is an argument for saying that good code is code that easy to understand, but above that you need to collaborate with others.

</comment><comment><USER2> Duplicate: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13012554](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13012554)</comment>


Boston Public Library's 78rpm Records Come to the Internet - <AUTHOR> https://blog.archive.org/2019/03/29/boston-public-librarys-78rpm-records-come-to-the-internet-reformatting-the-boston-public-library-sound-archives/ <comment><USER2> I love this kind of stuff. Currently listening to [https://archive.org/details/78_i-got-fish-to-fry_ricky- riddl...](https://archive.org/details/78_i-got-fish-to-fry_ricky-riddle-hal- bradley-and-his-band-mcalpin-toombs_gbia0004979a)

also [https://archive.org/details/78_song-of-the-islands-na- lei-o-...](https://archive.org/details/78_song-of-the-islands-na-lei-o- hawaii_chas.-e.-king-alfred-apakas- hawaiians_gbia0003974a/%22Song+of+The+Islands%22+\(Na+Lei+o+Hawaii\)+-+Chas.+E.+King.flac)

they seem to be available in 24 bit FLAC format too - lots of fun.

</comment><comment><USER3> For those, like myself, curious about the digitization process: [https://great78.archive.org/preservation/](https://great78.archive.org/preservation/)</comment>


Study on daily snacking habits paid by the food industry [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://www.stateofsnacking.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/2019_MDLZ_stateofsnacking_report_GLOBAL_EN.pdf <comment><AUTHOR> I see a lot of similarities to the tobacco industry. The consumption of an unhealthy product is being marketed as a way to "slow down" from the stress of the day and being more mindful.</comment>


Chevron Calls End to New Liquified Natural Gas Mega Projects - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-03-21/chevron-calls-end-of-lng-mega-project-after-88-billion-spree <comment><USER2> This headline seems inaccurate, it's just not expanding further it seems? The headline sounds like they're turning out the lights and going home.

First paragraph:

 _" Chevron Corp. has signaled the end of major new LNG projects in Western Australia and is unlikely to sanction an expansion of its Gorgon and Wheatstone export developments as it focuses on boosting returns from $88 billion of investment."_

<comment><USER3> Good point. We've revised the title above.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> To put this in perspective, the population of Western Australia is about 2.6 million people. Most of those -- around 2 million -- live in Perth. Around $33k spent for every many, woman and child in the state.

A lot of that $88 billion (Gorgon and Wheatstone) was spent on local labour and supplies. And Gorgon was _one_ capital project. At the height of the boom, there were hundreds of billions of dollars of capital projects underway _simultaneously_ across Australia.

When I was last in SF a few months ago it reminded me of Perth at the height of the boom.

And I found it unsettling.

<comment><USER5> I hadn't thought about it until now, but Canada and Australia are very similar in several respects. They both have vast natural resources, and the population of both is found mostly in small regions.

In Australia it's mostly along some of the coast. In Canada it's mostly in a small strip just to the north of the USA.

Contrast to Europe. Lots of population everywhere. Contrast to the USA. The eastern third of the country is quite developed, as is a good part of California.

<comment><USER6> Just ignore Portland, Seattle and the entirety of NorCal, along with Denver/Boulder, and a bunch of other large cities in what some call the "flyover" parts of the US.

<comment><USER7> Also the 27 million people living in Texas.

<comment><USER8> Texas is 695,662 km^2. That's larger than the combined area of Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, and Great Britain (682,034 km^2), which have a combined population of more than 174 million people.

So, yes, Texas is _comparatively_ under-developed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Honestly, I never know what to believe when I read these articles. A good friend of mine was on the board of a major oil company - and he told me stories about the backroom deals involving huge investments. Huge projects were really pay-offs to one country which would in-turn take actions impacting another country and resulting in furthering the oil company's goals (which weren't always just direct profit. Politicians put in power - groups hurt or supported - payback for favors from years before - actions to influence major court decisions years in the future.) Oil companies act in completely opaque ways.

At this point, I'm really just convinced that we need public involvement with all decisions by all powerful organizations - whether government or business. Nobody is on our side at these places.

<comment><USER10> And you think the government is on your side? The same government in the US stripping the EPA of power?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Smart move by Chevron.

Soon there will be some big LNG projects coming online in the USA. Two that are not just proposals but are in various stages of construction are:

[http://www.cheniere.com/terminals/sabine- pass/](http://www.cheniere.com/terminals/sabine-pass/)

[https://www.dom.com/covepoint](https://www.dom.com/covepoint)

<comment><USER11> I take it that you read the article, because it had a graph showing US exports rising from nothing to a lot over 2016-2020?

<comment><USER5> Graphs are one thing, details about actual ongoing construction are something else. The North America graph in the article looks like a classic startup "hockey stick". And I've been at too many startups and seen too many hockey sticks to take them seriously. Details matter.

The two projects I linked to were delayed by many years. So the fact that there is substantial construction at both sites is a big deal. The fact that Cheniere is actually exporting LNG right now is an even bigger deal.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> At least they'll have a post apocalyptic industrial set for the next Mad Max movie. Just need some pigs to make the gas.

</comment><comment><USER13> The article never tells what LNG is.

<comment><USER5> You could always use Wiki.

Take natural gas (mostly methane) out of the ground. Cool it until it turns into a liquid (aka LNG) and takes less than 2% of the volume of the gas. Put it into ships. Sail ships to countries like Japan. Turn liquid back into gas and use it for e.g. power generation.

<comment><USER14> Even better, put the LNG back on the boat, send it to Australia and make 110% profit!

<comment><USER15> Please, please, tell me you are joking!

<comment><USER16> somewhat. LNG is sold on the basis of long-term supply contract. It's quite possible that LNG exported from Western Australia could make its way back to Sydney, Melbourne, other places if there is no pipeline infrastructure in place. the LNG import facilities compete on price, and in this example, Chevron would sell it to the highest bidder.

No one wants "stranded" gas, but it would be up to the Government of Australia to set up the pipeline to its major cities. I'm sure such a pipeline exists, but given the quantity of gas available, Australia may not be able to use it all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> One day we'll realize that these big companies have been looting our natural resources with the full collaboration of the government.

<comment><USER18> You say that as though big companies and government are not part of us. They are. We elect them and work for them. We also make extensive use of the resources they extract for the enormous benefit of everyone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Smart move because there is not economic incentive for most "green energy" projects. Apologies to my liberal friends, but until you go full-Marxist in the first world countries, market-cost will always win. Game on!

<comment><USER20> Those "market costs" are based on some exceptionally deep accounting failures of both externalities of use, and externalities of formation.

The "market price" is off by roughly seven orders of magnitude, for petroleum.

<comment><USER21> Sure, the private cost of petroleum doesn't reflect the social cost. But you're saying it should be TEN MILLION TIMES dearer?

<comment><USER20> Based on the inputs of time and initial biomass, yes, roughly.

Burning petroleum or coal is much more like burning diamonds than wood, economically and geologically. And if you look at the history of how we got here, especially the law and economics, the scientific basis for those assumptions was tremendously flawed.

[https://dge.carnegiescience.edu/DGE/Dukes/Dukes_ClimChange1....](https://dge.carnegiescience.edu/DGE/Dukes/Dukes_ClimChange1.pdf)

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_of_Capture](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_of_Capture)

It's a complicated story, I'm working on putting it together.

<comment><USER22> You know what? The linked paper's assertion of 89 metric tonnes of plant matter = 1 gallon gasoline today? That's a thing. Sure. Calling the overall use of fuels reckless? Also a thing. It's fine, really.

Assigning gas a $20,000,000/gallon value based on crude extrapolations of what biomass it would take to replace gas, without doing _hardcore_ economic modelling on the price elasticity of demand, the availability of substitutes, and explaining the assumptions you've made to determine what's the right discount rate to use on the future value of the stored resource – and, indeed, of the value of the environment and humanity's future in general?

That's little better than pulling the numbers out of your ass. The world isn't linear enough to just do things like that.

<comment><USER20> The price elasticity argument is a red herring. The availability of substitutes is something to consider, though to a large extent _for mobile transportation fuels_ those simply do not exist. There are some remote possibilities that we might be able to come up with something. Electrical generation looks slightly more favourable, and would replace much coal use. The 15% or so of coal used in coking of iron for steel production, somewhat less so, though that's potentially fungible.

There's a reason I'm suggesting order-of-magnitude ranges for pricing errors rather than specific dollar amounts to any level of precision, and I'm willing to suggest a 3-8 OOM range (1,000 to 100,000,000) range based on available data.

A nonrenewable resource, economically, is one whose market price fails to account for the time costs of natural formation, such that rates of consumption exceed rates of restoration.

The relevant number from Dukes' paper, by the way, isn't strictly the biomass required, but the _accumulation period_ of that biomass: roughly 5 million years of ancient accumulation per present year of usage (as of 1997). Another source, _Reinventing Fire_ (Amory Lovins _et al_ ) gives the value of 17 million times higher a usage than accumulation rate.

Either way, this represents an off-books financing either in the form of debt (as many represent it) or a draw-down of capital stock or savings (as I prefer to view it), which present economic theory fails to account for.

It needn't do this, and I've been exploring how and why the present circumstance and economic mythology (to use economist Thorstein Veblen's term) emerged.

Adam Smith defines costs as the total factors of input, which would include natural factors and _their_ factors, including formation time. David Ricardo presumed land rents (from which natural resource rents theory emerged) were based on "the original and indestructible qualities of the soil", two false premises. Boehm-Bawerk, Marshall, and Menger discussed theories of cost far more comprehensive than the minimalistic and incomplete marginal theories now dominant (and causing numerous problems throughout microeconomics). The formative papers on natural resource and exhaustive resource pricing (Gray, 1914, Hotelling, 1931) fail to cite any _geological_ references.

At the same time that this theory (or mythology) was forming and extractive fossil-fuel industries were forming, the understanding of geological scales and processes was itself undergoing a phenomenal revolution. As of Smith's time, understanding of the age of the Earth ranged from Ussher's ~6,000 years to ... "unknowably long" (Hutton), with estimates developing over the course of the 19th century of from hundreds of thousands to hundreds of millions of years, though Lord Kelvin and other estimates ranging in the 20-40 million year range, based on understandings of thermodynamics ... and an ignorance of radioactivity. It was in this period that the _legal_ models of property over mineral resources were established, largely Rule of Capture, with significant jurisprudence in 1804 (Post v. Priestly), the 1880s (oil & gas, W. Va. and Penn.), and 1904 (Texas). That law saw modifications in the 1930s due to advances in geological _structural_ but not _temporal_ understanding, and still remains largely in effect today in Texas and elsewhere (Daintith, several publications).

Chasing _value_ manages to confound the fact that _cost_ , _price_ , and _value_ are in fact three _separate_ properties, though related. I call into question the environmental economic practice of trying to assign "use value" to various environmental factors without _also_ taking into account the creation costs, net of environmental factors of production. I'm still thinking through full implications of this: entropy increases, so there's a net loss throughout the system, but there are more and less sustainable rates of such loss.

I stand by my point that the problem is not, as @marcgcombi's (now flagged) comment states, that renewable resources are too expensive, but that _nonrenewable_ resources have been fantastically under-priced by market forces. The good news in my critique, though, is that this may be a problem which can be addressed through market mechanisms: a full accounting of the formation and replacement costs of fossil-fuel resources would make the extraction of them at present rates economically and financially unsustainable. A retroactive application of debits to account for the squandered resources would turn coal-, oil- and gas-extracting firms and nations into the biggest financial catastrophes ever (though nonsustainable ag processes might be another similar case).

Getting back to the price-elasticity question: if your market price fails to account for true costs of production, you are nowhere near an equilibrium point. Computations of elasticities are then the equivalent of premature optimisation in software: you've first got to get the correct outputs and functioning.

More generally: we're aware of what the long-term stable equilibrium point of human activity was _prior_ to mass consumption of nonrenewable fossil fuel resources. Net energy throughput per capita was about 1/100th of the present value (~1/1000th for the US), and total supported population roughly 1/16th present values. We found ourselves on an over-capacity lifeboat but with an immense supplies cache. We've mistaken that supplies cache with the capacity to sustain ourselves indefinitely, a story which I suspect will end poorly.

I'm quite aware that this is not orthodox economic thinking. (It is well within the mainstream of ecology, biology, and physics, however.) I'm also aware that it's rather better supported in economics, finance, and geology, as well as legal miscarriage, than very nearly all of what _is_ orthodoxy.

<comment><USER22> You're right to disconnect the cost, price, and value of a resource, but you seem to ignore that while computing the results you arrive at, and get nonsense contaminating what would otherwise be a good point.

As long as we're pretending to talk economics of _any_ sort, orthodox or otherwise, the only _cost_ that matters is the opportunity cost. All those millions of years replacing the oil in the ground? There's no opportunity cost to that. No one gave up any second-best alternative. That was just the ecosystem doing it's thing. And, it's a sunk cost, to boot. It is fact now. There is nothing to do about it.

So the only questions that matter here are _what is the best possible alternative that we could possibly imagine for the future which we give up by extracting this gallon of gasoline_ and _how should we compare that to 2017 dollars_ (how to discount the future, or even whether to do so).

If you think we can achieve output with same value as humanity _currently_ regards _10 million bushels of corn_ by leaving just 1 gallon of gasoline's worth of petroleum in the ground, I'd like to hear why and how, because that's an extraordinary claim, and if they were actually real we could pay for a _lot_ of alternative energy sources with these fantastical savings.

<comment><USER20> On the opportunity cost argument, consider a few alternative scenarios. How would you account for utilisation of a resource in the following circumstances:

1\. You are in an office, with an office-supply cabinet. Your costs of accessing new supplies are the time it takes you to walk to the cabinet and obtain them. At some point, those supplies must be re-ordered. What is the property accounting mechanism for those supplies?

2\. You've come into an inheritance. It represents the accumulated earnings of several lifetimes of your benefactors. You are limited to withdrawing a maximum amount of money in a given visit, and each visit requires cross-town travel and cab fare. How do you account for the depletion of this fund? Do you include your own time costs? The cab fare? An accounting for the depletion of the fund itself? An accounting of the costs of restoring withdrawn funds?

How does this change if your own present earning potential is only a very small fraction of the current fund? If the fund represents, say, the equivalent if 5 million ancestors' lifetime earnings?

3\. You and 63 others are in a lifeboat, floating adrift, a year from the nearest opportunity for rescue. There is food and water aboard the lifeboat, but only sufficient to keep a maximum of 16 alive for that period. How do you account for the usage and decide on allocation of those supplies?

I'm well aware of opportunity costs, and of sunk costs.

For the former, I'm fairly convinced that the opportunities are not fully enumerated in current accounting, and that the economic, financial, and legal doctrines as I've described briefly above are based on world-models strongly at odds with the actual world-state.

Of sunk costs, I'm no longer convinced that the sunk-cost fallacy is entirely valid. Again, not an original idea -- spend some time looking up "sunk cost fallacy fallacy". Gwern's essay on the topic is among the more interesting: [http://lesswrong.com/lw/9si/is_sunk_cost_fallacy_a_fallacy/](http://lesswrong.com/lw/9si/is_sunk_cost_fallacy_a_fallacy/) [http://www.gwern.net/Sunk%20cost](http://www.gwern.net/Sunk%20cost)

There are a number of dimensions of this, and I'm not convinced I've explored all of them, but in the specific case of fossil fuels, a particular problem is that _there is no accounting for the depletion of the resource itself._ At a time when present rates of consumption accounted for a millionth or less the total resource (NB: _not_ "proved reserves" or "economic reserves"), as was documented by several authors of coal in the 1880s, that might have been excusable. Funny thing is that exponential rates of increase have ... increased, and even in the case of the most abundant fossil resource (coal), that millionfold supply-to-present-consumption relationship has fallen to a factor of perhaps 100x. In other mineral resources we're looking at far smaller numbers (I've referenced a few such lists at [https://reddit.com/r/dredmorbius](https://reddit.com/r/dredmorbius)).

The problem with economic accounting such as you suggest -- best possible alternatives, future value, current prices, real currency -- is that it seems to me the accounting fails on multiple premises. Hotelling, incidentally, proposes just this in his 1931 paper, and it's one of several places in which I feel his analysis fails.

H.L. Gray, "Rent Under the Assumption of Exhaustibility" (1914) describes Ricardo's conclusions:

1\. Price should increase over time.

2\. Spot price is set by the highest cost-of-extraction mine.

3\. Owners with lower costs earn a differential rent.

The 2nd and 3rd conclusions match observed experiences in oil especially -- a resource with _exceptionally_ good pricing history, dating to 1859 (see, e.g., BP's annual statistical review), and a global market due to its exceptionally low worldwide transport costs of ~1% of product value.

The first does not.

What oil shows instead is a tremendous price _volatility_ , up until roughly 1945, followed by a long-term _declining_ trend, through 1973, followed by another period of exceedingly high volatility. Something appears wrong with the model.

For insights to this I strongly recommend chapter 13 of Daniel Yergin's _The Prize_ , and the establishment of production quotas in the US (with global significance for the reasons above) under the Texas Railroad Commission and US Department of Interior, in 1931. There's both the tremendous price volatility and low prices (to $0.02/bbl nominal) prior to the arrangement, and stability since. Explaining the gap through 1945, I'll suggest the Great Depression and WWII, but once those hurdles were cleared, the period 1945 - 1973 was one of unparalleled economic stability and growth most especially within the United States.

I also see the cost, price, and value dynamics as in play, and in particular, failures under specific conditions of price to reflect costs (backwards-S supply curves being a principle component) as throwing a wrench into the works. The assumption that market prices for extractive goods are correctly obtained strikes me as false.

Which gets to the point that there are in fact several distinct conditions in which prices are assessed. I'm still thinking this through, so I'm not settled on a final list, though Smith offers a guide:

1\. The price of commodities: goods produced anually on a renewable basis.

2\. The price (wages) of labour

3\. The price of stocks: an accumulation of goods, depleted over time

4\. Rents: a price for time-based right-of-access which otherwise does not deplete a resource.

What Smith points out is that the _long-term_ price _must_ cover the long-term costs of a good or resource, and that whilst market prices may not reflect this, often for extended periods of time, that such is ultimately not a sustainable circumstance.

I've suggested that the proper relationship, in which costs are seen as "total factors of production", is C <= P < V

That is, your costs must be less than (and at equilibrium, equal to) the market price, which is strictly less than value. In the short term, this relation can fail, though that reflects a problematic circumstance. Again, 19th c. economists discussed such things, 20th and 21st c. not so much.

I'm not particularly convinced of the first inequality, as entropy increases, hence the cost would be _less_ than the price, strictly. But within an open system, we're considering alternative flows, which may offer a better model.

Another analogue I like to refer to is that of whalefall, and the benthic communities which spring up around the episodic but bounded resource bounties which result. Over the course of about a century, a successive set of scavengers extract energy and nutrients from the whale's flesh, blubber, and ultimately bone. But the one thing those communities do _not_ do is sustain themselves. When the bounty, the accumulated savings, is spent down, they expire, and it's but a few prospecting individuals who manage to found the next such community.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Engineering a Repairable World - <AUTHOR> https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/at-work/education/engineering-a-repairable-world <comment><USER2> I feel this is an important topic sadly often overlooked. Repairability is important but also grants a license to customize your hardware/software and I feel in the long run, we need more far reaching concepts for our electronics and computers.

I often think about this regarding software. Most of us find it normal and reasonable, that older software needs to be updated/replaced. It seems all right, that Microsoft retires windows 7 for example. Yet, large corporation might still run decade old mainframes on the back end and nobody notices. Especially in the last decade, with dwindling hardware improvement, I ask myself, do we really need new Systems/Software all the time? What does the new version that needs improved hardware really bring to the table that makes it superior to the previous one? After all, many people just use the core functionality which hasn't really changed that much.

I think going forward we need to redefine sustainability in regards to computing. Of course, as is often the case these days, it's mostly a redefining of capitalism as a whole from which would follow such considerations.

<comment><USER3> >I ask myself, do we really need new Systems/Software all the time? What does the new version that needs improved hardware really bring to the table that makes it superior to the previous one? After all, many people just use the core functionality which hasn't really changed that much.

Not only that, there is also a limit (talking of interactive software) in needed speed (and also "features").

I mean, having a file (or more generally information) loading instantly is a good thing (and it should be as fast as it can be), but when you need to create content (be it writing a letter, putting together a spreadsheet, drawing something or even merely inputting data) how much speed is actually needed?

As an example, in the '90's creating/running a (complex) spreadsheet would imply to have "automatic calculation" turned off and you had to press F9 from time to time, or if you prefer, I was (slightly) faster than Excel.

Since - say - the middle of the 2000's this is not anymore needed and the responsiveness is outspeeding me (this may also mean that I am getting old) on _any_ system, with _any_ version of Excel including the (venerable) 97 one or _any_ of the similar spreadsheet programs around, even of relatively low powered machines.

For Word (or more generally word processors) this happened even earlier, you have to think at what you are writing, which takes some time, and BTW most (and by most I think of 95% or more of the users) use a word processor to write a letter or a report, I don't believe that there is any new possible feature to be added that would make those letters or reports be written in less time.</comment></comment>


Spetsnaz: The Story Behind the Soviet SAS - Viktor Sovorov - <AUTHOR> http://militera.lib.ru/research/suvorov6/index.html

<comment><USER2> The first chapter is good enough to carry you to the end: <http://militera.lib.ru/research/suvorov6/01.html></comment>


Xi's Last-Minute Switch on U.S.-China Trade Deal Upended It - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/16/world/asia/trade-xi-jinping-trump-china-united-states.html <comment><USER2> It is strange, past US China deals just resulted in deals but no real changes. China just would go on with the status quo.

If anything that path would seem to work here giving Trump some good PR and China could do whatever.

A confrontational approach directed at Trump of all presidents would seem highly in advisable....

Why the change in approach plus the wrong president to try this approach with?

We're Xi and his circle that out of touch?</comment>


Ask HN:  Build a chat functionality in iOS app - <AUTHOR>

I am building an iOS app and I need to build a chat functionality within the app. The app connects two people (both using the app) and I want to build the functionality to have them chat with each other in the app? What is the best way to go about doing something like this?
With my limited experience in building iOS app, I guess that this would essentially send push notifications back and forth for chat. Are there any best practices on building something which will be cheap and could scale at least decently.
Any general pointers on building this? <comment><USER2> Take a look at this iOS open source project: [https://github.com/firebase/firechat- ios](https://github.com/firebase/firechat-ios)

It's a basic chat app built around Firebase as a backend.

</comment><comment><USER3> Have a look at this, might be useful:

[https://goinstant.com/](https://goinstant.com/)</comment>


The Apollo Saturn V LVDC circuit board - <AUTHOR> http://www.frantone.com/designwritings/design_writings_LVDC.html

<comment><USER2> Mixed feelings... On the one hand, fascinating to see the guts of these circuits revealed, on the other that's destruction on a level that makes me cringe. I know that she got the board with the specific instructions to destroy it so I guess she lived up to the promise but taking a chisel to these bugs me in a way that is hard to put to words.

I guess there is no way back on that one.

<comment><USER3> I'm wondering why the chips themselves, once removed from their placement, couldn't just be x-rayed, rather than destroyed?

<comment><USER4> They were X-rayed too. X-ray imaging can only tell you so much. I think it is perfectly acceptable to destroy some to gain an understanding of what these things actually were. She did a marvelous job of documenting the teardown and should be commended for that, many more people will have an appreciation for this historical technology with this documentation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is why I love HN, every so often we run across a link like this where someone is toiling away with just the most fascinating work, often for just the shear love of the technology. By the way, if you go up to the home page, there are many more interesting gems from Fran.

<comment><USER6> _"... where someone is toiling away with just the most fascinating work, often for just the shear love of the technology. ..."_

Fran tech rocks, literally. Check out the pages on the guitar pedal effects: <[http://www.frantone.com/history.html>](http://www.frantone.com/history.html>) and <[http://www.frantone.com/about.htm>](http://www.frantone.com/about.htm>) absolute works of technical art.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Since it's not explicitly stated until near the end of the very long page, the LVDC was the Saturn V rocket's Launch Vehicle Digital Computer. More details at [1].

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturn_Launch_Vehicle_Digital_C...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturn_Launch_Vehicle_Digital_Computer)

<comment><USER8> It's in the first paragraph, but a bit hidden.

> so that once and for all the real technology beneath the surface could be > understood, that could explain how the Apollo Launch Vehicle Digital > Computer really worked.

<comment><USER7> Thanks. Somehow I missed that.</comment></comment></comment>


Uk-ISP-group-names-mozilla-internet-villain-for-supporting-DNS-over-HTTPS/ - <AUTHOR> https://www.zdnet.com/article/uk-isp-group-names-mozilla-internet-villain-for-supporting-dns-over-https/ <comment><USER2> If a stupid government or telco cartel doesn't like something then it means it's most likely good.

Kudos to Mozilla & Google for implementing this, although I wish it was a separate protocol rather than abusing HTTPS.

</comment><comment><USER3> "Several companies that sell censorship & filtering release a press statement that Mozilla is bad for not enabling them"

</comment><comment><USER4> So if I use a VPN plus Mozilla with this setting switched on I should be good to go?

Are there any actual guides on protecting your privacy online and eliminating filters? Preventing tracking and fingerprinting is already feasible with a combination of ublock origin and noscript for mozilla.

Also, what about linux?

</comment><comment><USER5> ISP's are salty that DoH will force them to buy expensive filtering kit that actually scans every packet rather than their current setup of a few lines in named.conf on their DNS servers.

Said expensive filtering kit would force many ISP's to reorganize their network architecture, because many don't have a single physical location that all traffic is routed via.</comment>


Covid-19: Debunking the Hemoglobin Story - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@amdahl/covid-19-debunking-the-hemoglobin-story-ce27773d1096 <comment><AUTHOR> I posted the debunked article so this is part apology. Lets keep debate open though, lets interrogate everything.</comment>


ECB votes to ban 500 euro note - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/us-ecb-banknote-idUSKCN0VO1UM <comment><USER2> Title is incorrect, should be "ECB considers scrapping 500 euro note"

Nobody is voting for anything yet: European finance ministers have asked the ECB to look at ways to tighten cash security.</comment>


HTML5 Canvas drawText() considered harmful - <AUTHOR> http://simonsarris.com/blog/322-canvas-drawtext-considered-harmful

<comment><USER2> Awesome post. More should be like this. It clearly defines the issue (and a solution), with data to show it. Bonus for extra data detailing when it might not be a good idea as well.

Sad about the flamebait title, though. It's not 'harmful', it's 'inefficient'. Crazily so. But not 'harmful'.

<comment><AUTHOR> Harmful enough to performance to be avoided, was what I was thinking.

Maybe it is a bit too sensational though...

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> If you consider everything that goes into rasterizing a line of text, it's not entirely surprising that a bitmap draw is considerably faster. ("Cache to bitmap".)

This is definitely a good place to optimize, though, if one needs to.

What's super funky is the difference between Chrome and The Rest. I'd not have expected that.

It's probably Google tracking your font rendering choices. ;-) ;-)

Edit: "performance murder" and the opening graphic are pretty hilarious.</comment>


Ask HN: A flexible python based cms - <AUTHOR>

Hi, I would like to know if there is a flexible cms where i can define my own content type.
It would typically be
  title
  Image
  description
  level
  date
  tags
For a given tag, the cms should generate a page with all custom objects that have the tag automatically (or with minimal manual intervention).  The objects should be sortable on the relevant fields.
I should also have the option of writing some content and including some of the objects, in which case, the objects should be auto-formatted based on some predefined template.  Is there any cms that can do this with some minimal customizations or is it better to roll my own based on django/flask?
Thank you. <comment><USER2> Kotti[0] and SubstanceD[1] are two pyramid-based CMSs that I've played with some. You could do what you are talking about pretty easily in either one.

[0] [http://kotti.pylonsproject.org/](http://kotti.pylonsproject.org/) [1] [http://substanced.net/](http://substanced.net/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you ianamartin. I will check it out!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> How about Widgy?

[http://wid.gy/](http://wid.gy/)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7736275](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7736275)

</comment><comment><USER4> [http://wagtail.io](http://wagtail.io) is definitely worth checking out.

</comment><comment><USER5> Drupal. Google 'headless Drupal' and you'll find some interesting implementations.

<comment><USER6> There was just a Meetup on this in SF last night. I missed it. I'm hearing good things about it though and probably missed out on a good opportunity to see it discussed live.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> django-cms is pretty tried and tested.

[https://www.django-cms.org/en/](https://www.django-cms.org/en/)</comment>


Ask HN: What's your least favorite tech word? Mine's "non-trivial". - <AUTHOR>

Any time I hear someone mutter "non-trivial" a little piece of me dies inside. What other art/profession uses that word?
I can't imagine an automotive engineer describing a new car engine as non-trivial or a painter describing his work as non-trivial.
Anyways, what words wind you guys up?
Edit: Happy Monday, btw. <comment><USER2> I have to step in here to defend "non-trivial".

Perhaps it is abused as a term by the population at large, but I'm reasonably sure it has its roots in theoretical computer science and maths. It has a meaning that is distinct from "complex". It means that something requires something more than pure mechanical verification or straightforward inspection.

A painter could use "non-trivial" in a sensible way. How much effort is involved in X? Well, it's non-trivial, because it involves more than having a look. It isn't estimating the effort, it is instead a binary classification - trivial and non-trivial.

Finally, to answer your question, I don't dislike individual words. I only dislike them once they are combined into sentences.

<comment><USER3> I'm a big fan of "non-trivial" myself, especially after reading [http://fishbowl.pastiche.org/2007/07/17/understanding_engine...](http://fishbowl.pastiche.org/2007/07/17/understanding_engineers_feasibility/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Enterprise.

<comment><USER5> And its evil twin, Mission Critical

<comment><USER6> Ah, but Mission Critical actually has a place. When you're working for NASA, you operate a nuclear plant or some other outfit like that.

Everywhere else it's just pretending you do something important.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> paradigm shift

leverage

<comment><USER7> Leverage is often irritatingly misused, but can be useful.

Paradigm shift - someone should invent a time machine and go back to shoot Kuhn's mother before he was born.

<comment><USER6> For that to happen we'd need a parad-- never mind.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Idempotent.

But non-trivial does have a specific meaning: it means that we don't have any code already written or proven technique that we can simply reuse for or apply to this problem, and some new knowledge will have to be synthesized, and there's a risk in making any estimates of time/cost until more is known.

<comment><USER9> What's wrong with idempotent? It has a precise, useful meaning

<comment><USER8> It's often misused. Along with orthogonal.

<comment><USER10> _shudder_ We have a business relationship with a financial company based out of Germany, and their system (which sits on top of replicated Oracle) defines "idempotent" to mean "our database already has a cache of the answer we already gave you". Oh, and they gave us a JAR file of client code that does client-side failover, with a fixed 8-second delay to account for the Oracle replication lag between sites. _No_ coordination between different instances of our client. So now, when one client fails over due to a connectivity blip, the other clients get cached error messages (logically equivalent to 404 Not Found). "Idempotent", indeed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Quantum, in almost any context. I do use non-trivial, but I'm a mathematician, and I refer you to Feynman's comments about tthe use of 'trivial'.

</comment><comment><USER12> It's not limited to tech people, but I do hear them say it a lot: "irregardless".

edit: Oh and let's not forget Scott Adam's favorite: Synergy

<comment><USER13> "irregarldess" burns my ears, too. I also want to fight when I hear someone say "often times" (redundant) or "I don't disagree with you" (passive- aggressive double negative)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> kludge synergy/synergistic/synergize proactive xml

<comment><USER6> No, not kludge, please :)

It's one of the best tech words out there, it is very specific and there is no other good way of saying it without using a whole pile of words.

<comment><USER14> It is a good word. I'm not saying people shouldn't use it. It is an ugly, ugly word to me - I hate the sound of it, which is part of why it is my least favorite. It's one of those words that sound like what they mean to me. What is that called anyway? Not onomatopoeia.

I also tend to hate it because I can tell before even starting to fix the kludge, it's likely to involve an large overhaul instead of a small bug fix.

<comment><USER6> I think that's how most kludges are born. Someone is given the assignment to repair something, they figure out that it will take them way too much time doing it the 'proper' way (their boss might simply not give them a time budget large enough to fix it well) so they resort to a kludge.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Tech/business jargon: "leverage" (when used as a verb) anywhere: "utilize" (when used as a word)

</comment><comment><USER16> "the cloud" please make it go away, it's totally the next buzzword to replace 'web 2.0'

</comment><comment><USER17> There's a joke that when an engineer says 'nontrivial,' he means 'impossible.'

<comment><USER7> The joke I heard was that it meant he didn't want to be bothered about it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Turnkey Solution

(My brain always translates to turkey inducing...)

</comment><comment><USER19> "Trivial" itself can sound quite snotty, said in the right way.

</comment><comment><USER20> 'webinar' has been annoying me for years now.

</comment><comment><USER21> synergy

(Go watch 'In good company')

</comment><comment><USER22> "Configurable"

</comment><comment><USER23> revolutionary

</comment><comment><USER24> "Realtime"

</comment><comment><USER25> disambiguate

</comment><comment><USER26> dead simple

</comment><comment><USER27> Erlang!

</comment><comment><USER28> savvy

</comment><comment><USER29> Drill. Like "drill down".

It seems that trepanation might be a good response to someone using this word.

"Could you drill down into my data set and shift some paradigms?" "Yes, and while I'm at it, I'll equalize your humours." _WHIRR_ "Indeed."</comment>


Make pretty things with processing.js - <AUTHOR> http://hampton-hack.appspot.com

<comment><USER2> Er, is this an ad for an event? I'm confused apropos the title...</comment>


Ask PG: Are you still implementing/working on the "Feature Requests"? - <AUTHOR>

In the footer of the main site pages is the "Feature Request" link [1]. I've submitted a few recently but I noticed today that the last comment that you seem to have replied to and said, "Done" (effectively) seems to be from about four years ago. I know you've implemented lots of features during the interim so I'm wondering if you could give us an idea about this page's usefulness to you.
Are you still using that list as a "wishlist" of sorts? If so, can you share any future plans from it?
Thanks!
[1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=363 <comment><AUTHOR> Dang - a whole week, 15 upvotes, but unable to get a reply. Shoot.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Clickable: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=363></comment>


Skype founders sue eBay for $75M per day - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2009/09/16/skype-sued/

<comment><USER2> Define greed? Selling a 2-bit p2p company for 1.6 BILLION and then bitching about it.

Even the YouTube guys haven't done that and theirs was a bigger initial investment.

[Edit: Not saying the YouTube guys would, but it's a good comparison]

<comment><USER3> Even though it may be greedy ebay was asking for it by not making sure they were actually buying all of skype and not just the front end.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> A copyright infringement suit - HA, that's funny coming from the guys who created Kazaa.

<comment><USER5> I think they've learned well from their adversaries that laws can be used for financial gain, not just for justice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I don't know if it's true or not (they are litigious, CYA), but it appears as though it's possible that maybe Niklas Zennstrom or Janus Friis were trying to blackmail eBay into selling Skype back to them cheap and this is the punishment for not doing so.

</comment><comment><USER7> "They claim that eBay's altering and misuse of their code could total to more than $75 million per day in damages, as each download of Skype is considered by them to be copyright infringement. If you do the math, that's over $27 billion per year. How they came up with that extraordinary number we cannot even begin to comprehend."

I certainly don't know of any other industry that estimates damages based on each download.

</comment><comment><USER8> How did eBay pay $2.6B for Skype and not obtain eternal, iron-clad rights to use and create derivative works of all IP contained within?

Who did the due diligence? Who handled the acquisition paperwork?

If eBay used any external counsel or investment bankers on the deal, they may be the next to be sued. Unless the Joltid claims are total bunk, and thrown out quickly.</comment>


On the Future Computer Era: Modification of the American Character (1968) - <AUTHOR> https://www.rand.org/pubs/papers/P3780.html <comment><USER2> Extraordinary that the author of this prophetic piece of social commentary was also one of the inventors of packet switching!

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Baran](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Baran)

The diagrams of centralised, decentralised and distributed networks from his 1963 RAND paper "Introduction to Distributed Communications" will be familiar to many.

[https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/www/external/pubs/rese...](https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/www/external/pubs/research_memoranda/RM3420/fig1.GIF)

Here's the paper. If you ever hear someone say the Internet was designed to survive a nuclear strike, this is the research they're talking about.

[https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_memoranda/RM3420.html](https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_memoranda/RM3420.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> As I've said previously: the next time someone asks "who could have predicted the downsides of the Internet?", you can tell them: the guy who invented it, in the 1960s.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I know people that committed crimes in the 60s-70s-80s and were convicted but no one would ever know because the record keeping at the time was temporal.

My one felony from 12 years ago for smoking pot in public has cost me more money/jobs/promotions/relationships from Google searches and background checks than anything imaginable [in my opinion].

I believe that many criminals simply go back to crime since they're unhireable now that information is at everyone's fingertips.

Debt to society is never paid anymore. We have the Chinese "social credit system" in the U.S.; it's simply not announced the way theirs is.

<comment><USER4> What state? Look in to asking/applying for a pardon if it really was just possession.

<comment><USER3> Arizona; they do not pardon felonies. They will let you "restore your rights" after a number of years; which I have done, but it was expensive and required representation. I can vote, but I can't do much else.

<comment><USER5> Why is it not unconstitutional in the US to disenfranchise those with a criminal record who have served out their sentence?

<comment><USER6> The disenfranchisement is seen as part of the sentence. Traditionally, the crimes deserving of this were very serious such as murder, rape, felony robbery, etc. The people committing these crimes were considered as having violated the social contract in such a manner that society could no longer trust them.

Unfortunately, many less serious offences have been classified as more serious in order to be "hard on crime" leading to many generally trustworthy citizens losing rights.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Page 9, The New Character Of The Citizen

 _" Those who have fallen from the rope, either accidentally or deliberately, will find society not to their liking and won't have much to lose in open hostility. These will be the alienated citizens of tomorrow."_

Page 1 Footnote:

 _" This Paper was presented at the MIT Club of Northern California in San Francisco, 27 February 1968."_

Geez. The Tet Offensive had occurred a month earlier, The Monterey Pop Festival 8 months earlier. The Jefferson Airplane, Grateful Dead, Who, Hendrix, Joplin, etc. were all just starting out. MLK and RFK were still addressing crowds of listeners and the DNC in Chicago was 6 months away.

Computers generated enormous heat, required 30 and 60 amp power, and filled rooms wall-to-wall.

Abstracting the ideas presented in this paper with everything else going on in the world is a testament to just how serious he viewed his role in developing the use of communications and information technology. He didn't care a wit about cat videos. He cared about whether quantitative decision making contributed to hopelessness, despair and extreme anti-social behavior.

<comment><USER8> > He cared about whether quantitative decision making contributed to > hopelessness, despair and extreme anti-social behavior.

Makes one wonder, how tall the giants on whose shoulders we rest, really are.

I mean, callous and anti-social behaviour existed before computers came about. Computers are a force multiplier for almost everything at which they are applied.

Page 11:

" _It may be appropriate that our profession, not normally given to introspection, start to examine its own role to better appreciate the contribution we might make. I believe those who understand future technology have an obligation to act at least as an early warning system to the rest of society._ "

Indeed, it seems those 'future technology' wizards need to constantly remind themselves of such duties... and the delicate quandary is that what is old, becomes new again meanwhile.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Excerpt:

> From the earliest age the new child of America will probably be counseled > to: "This above all--play it cool; keep your nose clean; don't take chances; > do what you're told; don't argue with authority. And remember: _nothing you > do will ever be forgotten_ and anything can be held against you. . . . Great > pressure will be placed on American citizens to transform from free spirits > who do not fear living their lives as men (with the assurance that if one > fails one can always try again) into a new nation of tightrope walkers.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> This is just one of numerous monographs written by Paul Baran (co-)inventor of packet switching, and cofounder of the Institute for the Future (IFTF).

I'd stumbled across these a couple of years ago and was proufoundly struck by Baran's thoughts and concerns. The entire set of his writings at RAND have been generously put online for free access:

[https://www.rand.org/pubs/authors/b/baran_paul.html](https://www.rand.org/pubs/authors/b/baran_paul.html)

There's very little from today's discussion not present in earlier periods.

</comment><comment><USER4> > A warning that unintended but disastrous effects on society have resulted > from improved and computerized recordkeeping, owing to (1) the habit of > limiting the number of variables considered to those easily quantified, (2) > the tendency to use records and scores instead of judgment, and (3) the use > of information to maximize private profit without regard to the damage > inflicted by everybody doing this at once.

Sound familiar to anyone?

</comment><comment><USER10> In the old days, they murdered prophets.

Today we are more efficient, and just bury their words in haystacks.

</comment><comment><USER11> Well, that's prophetic.

> Of course, a paper degree never made an engineer, but it does eliminate the > necessity for the personnel manager to be able to think.

I'm honestly surprised folks were talking about credentialism back in 1968. Almost like they were just as smart as we are _grin_</comment>


Streaming Music is Ripping You Off; Fight back with this simple hack - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/cuepoint/streaming-music-is-ripping-you-off-61dc501e7f94

<comment><USER2> The band Vulfpeck [1] tried this a year ago, releasing a completely silent EP and telling their fans to loop it. They did get some cash from it, but Spotify ended up taking their album down [2].

If you want to support artists, this honestly seems like a really roundabout and ineffective way of doing it. Buy a CD or something.

[1]: [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/05/08/spotify-silent- albu...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/05/08/spotify-silent- album_n_5275679.html)

[2]: [http://www.theverge.com/2014/5/7/5690590/spotify-removes- sil...](http://www.theverge.com/2014/5/7/5690590/spotify-removes-silent-album- that-earned-indie-band-20000)

<comment> norea-armozel I always try to buy as direct from the artist as possible. In the case of many synthwave artists like Droid Bishop it seems Bandcamp is the most direct way and they get a good chunk of the money from the purchase as opposed to other avenues like iTunes. So, I always suggest to people to see if the artist in question has a Bandcamp or equivalent account on a site where they can get the majority of the money from the purchase. Otherwise, buy a CD as you state or even some merchandise when they're on tour since they get quite a bit of the money from that as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I always thought it was (roughly) general knowledge that artists make their money from going on tour, with the label taking most of the money from cd / record sales from the beginning of time.

I remember some tv show / documentary (years ago) of a rapper who had millions in cd sales but was still broke and living with mom because media sales don't generate money for the artist - tours do.

<comment><USER4> "I always thought it was (roughly) general knowledge that artists make their money from going on tour"

It's roughly not because that's not how it used to be. Money from tours is something that started to become the trend since (I'd say) mid eighties.

<comment><USER5> ...and the vast majority of bands (especially small bands) lose money on live performance.

That leaves merch as the only way to make money. I prefer to listen to music by people who want to make music, not people who are good at selling t-shirts.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I have been working on an alternative streaming service that uses the Subscriber Share method. We are mostly targeting independent musicians, youtube musicians, and anyone without a label. I feel label are dead weight these days and just eat up a large piece of the pie for hardly any work.

My goal is to cut them out starting with independent artist of today, and maybe in a few years more artist will relies you don't need a label to get popular any more and can do it on your own.

</comment><comment><USER7> If you want to support your artists, go see them live. Not only you will be more happy about it, they will too, and they'll make money that way.</comment>


Helping to make LuaJIT faster - <AUTHOR> https://blog.cloudflare.com/helping-to-make-luajit-faster/ <comment><USER2> Isn't this the exact opposite of what Mike Pall wants for LuaJIT?

>> "Although we've not done a huge amount of direct LuaJIT research, we've always tried to stay abreast of its development"

I can't find the post in the list-serv but I recall Mike Pall fairly adamant that he wants the project to be taken over by someone who:

A. Has contributed substantially and understands the internals of LuaJIT and

B. Not to make poor design decisions that other VM have historically made.

C. Be dedicated to LuaJIT

This Kings College London group who's being funded to lead this admits they have no prior expertise on LuaJIT and they are mainly aware of only other JIT/VM.

Also, since Kings College London is an academic institution - doesn't that mean that you'll never have a consistent core team working on LuaJIT because students are just going to cycle through the school in order graduate.

Please take my comments coming from a place of caring. LuaJIT is really a marvel at how much it does in such a small code base.

<comment><USER3> Just to be clear, the team at King's is not taking maintainership of LuaJIT. The team is, however, interested in benchmarking and VM performance.

Tom Fransham, a recent addition to the team, will be benchmarking and improving LuaJIT. Tom has prior experience in hacking LuaJIT, e.g. intrinsics and GC.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This sounds like amazing news. LuaJIT being given a future direction by people who know what they're doing & have additional bright ideas to add, funded by Cloudflare.

I mean... wow. Sure, we'll see how things go, but as a user this signifies that LuaJIT now actually has a future.

</comment><comment><USER5> I don't need it to be faster, I need it to stop crashing whenever I try to stuff over 2GB into memory.

<comment><USER6> I hear ya.... try:

* Building with LJ_GC64 mode. [1]

It is newer but people are using it and it has been merged by Mike Pall into v2.1. Still beta though.

* Using FFI to allocate large objects or large pools of small objects.

I made some simple containers to help with the FFI parts [2] and also a (not recently updated) jemalloc binding [3] to help tune memory usage. Here's a gist I made with some experimental results [4].

[1] [https://github.com/LuaJIT/LuaJIT/issues/25](https://github.com/LuaJIT/LuaJIT/issues/25)

[2] [https://github.com/neomantra/lds](https://github.com/neomantra/lds)

[3] [https://github.com/neomantra/luajit- jemalloc](https://github.com/neomantra/luajit-jemalloc)

[4] [https://gist.github.com/neomantra/9122165](https://gist.github.com/neomantra/9122165)</comment></comment>


The Universal Law of Leverage - <AUTHOR> http://www.defmacro.org/ramblings/leverage.html <comment><USER2> This is a tangent to your main point, but:

"Statistics suggest that most successful startup founders have three failures under their belt before they make it big. It doesn't have to be that way. While nothing can replace hard-earned experience, people can and do learn from other people's mistakes. I'm a firm believer that a couple of simple (in hindsight) lessons can significantly increase the overall success rate."

I suspect that the "3 failures before a successful startup" statistic already _includes_ learning from other people's mistakes. Why? Because these startup founders were eventually successful. That indicates they had a capacity to learn from their mistakes (either that, or got really really lucky), and most people who can learn from their own mistakes are more than happy to learn from others'. They've probably _already_ read up everything they could on successful and unsuccessful former founders.

The ones who haven't are the folks that are on their 10th (or 30th) startup and still haven't got traction. That happens to some people...they bounce from dream to dream without ever making any of them come true, because they never fix the fundamental problems with their assumptions.

What I've found - in both programming and startups - is that I needed a basic level of experience before all the advice I'd read even started to make sense. So I read up on all these software development methodologies, but until I actually had to work on large software projects and manage the complexity that inevitably popped up, I didn't understand the _why_ behind the practices, and so didn't know how to apply them correctly. It's like all the debates on TDD that have been popping up: they miss the point entirely, because the question isn't "Are unit tests good are bad?", it's " _When_ are unit tests useful, and when do they cost you more work than they save?"

<comment><USER3> > That happens to some people...they bounce from dream to dream without ever > making any of them come true, because they never fix the fundamental > problems with their assumptions.

That one is going in my quotes.txt! I've found it very difficult to get people over their fundamental misconceptions, how can we do that efficiently, without being jerks?

<comment><USER4> You can try to gently disprove someone's misconceptions but it's easier to help them do so themselves. Whatever you do you can't batter their door down with logic and facts, unless they're a truly scientific type; ideally, there's some harmless proving ground, or solid analogy, that can open their eyes to the reality of the situation. Like if someone is saying "I'll just start a social network and be the next Zuckerberg", get them to read a book on the history of Facebook and another on why things fail, get them to start a Ning group and really _experience_ a "safe" failure.

I often find myself as the voice of reason/realism among starry-eyed people, but it's quite fun helping people work out that actually they _can_ get to where they want, even though their assumptions were totally wrong.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Short summary: Author talks about how ease of getting leverage is inversely proportional to how much you need it. A little bit of hyperbole but solid general points. The value in the article is the way the author thinks and talks through it, a couple thought provoking sentences in there make it worth a read.

</comment><comment><USER6> If "leverage" was defined (it's a technical, non-dictionary, meaning), and examples given, the hypothesis could be tested against each instance.

\- Financially, leverage means debt; more capital means you can do more.

\- Hiring people increases leverage.

\- Automating tasks increases leverage: whether it be windmill or bash script.

\- "Buy (or use open source, or reuse) not build" increases leverage.

\- Working smarter not harder, in general, increases leverage.

From these examples. I see that the author meant _leverage that depends on other people_. The last three examples depend only on self-reliance, so you can do them right now. There's no perversity law for them. Incidentally, there's a "Muphry's Law" <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muphry%27s_law>

<comment><USER7> I read it as leverage in negotiations -- a simple measure of how hard you push compared to how far they lean.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I think another take-home point is that you cant build a business model around too many outside partnerships (what the author calls leverage). Your business has to be solid enough to gain that initial traction then the outside partners will come.

</comment><comment><USER9> I think this is mostly true, but there's a paradoxical completion to it: fight or flight.

If something is about to knock wipe you off the map, you're likely to perform above the statistical average to make sure that doesn't happen. If you've got lots of cash in the bank, there's less likely to start making money. If things get tight, you're fighting to stay alive.

</comment><comment><USER10> I like the astute observations being made, but I'd like to suggest that leverage is a bad thing for startups in a developed economy. I think everything stated still holds if you substitute "equity investment" for leverage, and the result for everyone tends to be better.

<comment><USER11> They aren't using the term "leverage" in the financial sense (investing money that you borrowed). By "leverage", the article author means "ability to control a situation and/or make your dream come true."

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Well, to summarize: like attracts like. Even in business world.

<comment><USER4> Success attracts success. It's the herd mentality. "If they're doing well/have customers/have funding/have a boyfriend, they must be worth buying from/investing in/dating since someone else says so!"

<comment><USER12> You've got it upside down. For whatever definition of X:

Like attracts like means that because you already are X, then you begin to attract other people who are also X. Conversely if you want to be X, you can't become one by merely hanging out with people who are X.</comment></comment></comment>


Web Cryptography: Salted Hash and Other Tasty Dishes - <AUTHOR> http://www.alistapart.com/articles/web-cryptography-salted-hash-and-other-tasty-dishes/ <comment><USER2> Since the target audience is mostly non-hackers, I'd make these points instead:

\- For people not using a library or framework, use one!

\- For people who build libraries and frameworks, consider bcrypt!

\- For people who aren't cryptography deities, don't roll your own. Even Bruce Schneier needs heavy peer review.

And a nit - SHA-1 is showing its age and is being phased out; SHA-2 is much stronger and is widely available.

</comment><comment><USER3> No mention of bcrypt. <http://codahale.com/how-to-safely-store-a-password/></comment>